


Assorted fujocourse again

by Franzeska



Series: March Meta Matters [28]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2020-01-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 16:15:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23372680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Franzeska/pseuds/Franzeska
Summary: A collection of tumblr meta about fujoshi discourse
Series: March Meta Matters [28]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1664836
Kudos: 1
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	1. "Taking Away" Representation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 5, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189488633789/hi-so-i-just-read-that-one-post-by-three-rings  
https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189489176029/hi-so-i-just-read-that-one-post-by-three-rings

> [frillyfacefins](https://frillyfacefins.tumblr.com/) asked: Hi! So I just read that one post by three-rings about why women like gay romance, and since I've had so many fights with a friend of mine about this, I wondered if you have some input: Basically, her argument is that it doesn't matter why women like to read gay romance, because it fetishizes gay men in such a way that the fact that gay men exist in the real world and are not represented faithfully by these books, gets ignored. Basically, cis (sometimes straight) women 'take away' representation?

Well, answer #1 is: “What the actual fuck does FETISHIZE mean anyway?”

On Tumblr, no one can answer this properly, and it always turns into “Girls have pants feelings, and that’s not okay.”

Women have a right to a fantasy life. Sometimes, those barbie dolls we’re dressing up look like men. Big whoop.

Answer #2 is: “Do you watch Drag Race?”

The answer is basically always yes. Women who shit on other women for liking slash are aaaaaaall over misogynist gay male appropriation from women. Because things men do are original and creative, but things women do are stealing, and we should go caretake instead of having hobbies.

The reality is that it is fine, healthy, and desirable to have an outlet for your inner feelings that is not a direct and literal representation of your outer form. “Representation” is much more complicated than “Their face looks like mine”.

For more on this, she could read David Halperin’s book _How to be Gay_ or Francesca Coppa’s book chapter I linked to in that other post, which draws the very obvious analogy between Halperin’s work and slash fandom.

Answer #3 is that the vast majority of professional queer media used to be by, for, and about cis gay men. Now, that media still exists, but there’s also this other set of media which is m/m by and for AFAB people (not all of us women). We have not taken anything away. We have simply made media for ourselves.

But women aren’t allowed to do things for _ourselves,_ only for _others_, so this is a problem.

Cis gay men still make their cis gay man media. It looks like cis straight man media except that the token love interest is a hot guy with no personality instead of a hot girl with no personality. And there are more dick measurements.

Okay, okay, cis gay men also write lots of depressing literary stuff about the pain of being a minority. Yay.

Women invented slash fandom. Previously, there was nothing. Then we made a thing. Literally no territory was stolen from queer men.

These dumb arguments are usually coming from cis women white knighting for cis gay men (who don’t give two shits about this debate and are busy watching gay porn on pornhub, not arguing about text romance novels). A few are coming from trans men who resent that their preferred media is mostly made by chicks.

For more on this, she should read this take on m/m romance as a professional industry by one of the few authors I think is probably _not_ lying about being a cis man. His analysis is that there _would not be_ any m/m romance novels if female authors in slash fandom had not caused there to be a market for pro work.

[https://jamiefessenden.com/2014/06/28/my-take-on-women-writing-mm-romance/](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fjamiefessenden.com%2F2014%2F06%2F28%2Fmy-take-on-women-writing-mm-romance%2F&t=ZTU4OGQ5MDE2NjFjYTdkZTNhYjk4NjY4MGFlNzU4ZTZhMGVhMDc0ZCwzSklJSGc5Yw%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F189488633789%2Fhi-so-i-just-read-that-one-post-by-three-rings&m=1)

Your friend is a misogynist asshole pulling a Not Like The Other Girls. Maybe one day she’ll get her head out of her ass. It’s a phase a lot of us go through, and misogynist culture rewards us for shitting on other women, so it can be hard to realize that’s what one is doing.

* * *

> The great problem with my friend is that she isn’t in fandom spaces, BUT she knows a shitton about queer history (she wrote an incredible essay about how Sherlock is canon gay, sadly its in German so, yeah…)… ‘Fetishize’ as she uses it really means to make something an object, and to like, make something about somebody but not for them
> 
> I genuinely think the problem is that she never liked women-written m/m herself, or any sort of pornography, tbh…. It’s easy to judge a group from the outside
> 
> Also I do have to stand up for gay romance writers, though. I mean, there aren’t THAT many around that also appeal to women’s tastes, but if you just like raunchy af smut in historically more-or-less-accurate settings, you really, really should at least take a look at James Lear’s work. Like. So good.
> 
> (I like reading gay authors because they sometimes aren’t quite as precious as some female m/m authors tend to be… I mean, its often very violent, but the kink is just so good…. But then, I’ve spent enough years in the furry fandom to appreciate some queer guys’ weird fetishes tbh)

Hee! True, there are some.

If that’s your friend’s take on things, I would 100% go for Halperin’s analysis of why representation of our insides trumps representations of our outsides. There are things you _cannot say_ when you make art that is too literal and not allegorical enough. That’s not just true of women.

He started out assuming that oldschool gay culture was passé because now we have real representation… and then found that his students loved appropriating The Golden Girls and loved the subtexty stuff and didn’t connect with the literal stuff.

Even when it comes to sexual fantasies, there are two major schools of experience: People who fantasize about themselves in a scenario and people who never appear in their own sexual fantasies. Why should the latter group be doomed to never consume anything they enjoy? Why should all art have a self insert option?

If your friend can’t accept that, she doesn’t know jack shit about other people’s experiences and she should be ashamed as a feminist and queer history buff.

You could always just throw Lucy Neville’s book at her.

But if she’s being willfully ignorant because Porn Bad and Representation Good, then she’s never going to listen.


	2. Always the same reasons

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 5, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189488442079/ninswhimsy-lucastapastatheshamanramen
> 
> This was the tail end of some discussion on three-rings' post.

Yup. This is one of the more common reasons people bring up.

I’ve read a lot of meta and a lot of academic articles on this over the years, and the reasons are so consistent that I sometimes can’t tell if a quote is me or not! This happened constantly with Lucy Neville’s book, which is awesome and you should all read!

_Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: Women and Gay Male Pornography and Erotica  
_

Another very common reason people bring up is the idea of getting outside yourself in general, not just because of body issues. It’s highly analogous to drag queens: gay men talk about being gay men via vaguely woman-shaped creations that have little to do with actual womanhood. Cis women talk about their internal experience via vaguely queer man-shaped creations that have little to do with the real experience of being a queer man.

It’s so analogous, in fact, that when I went to write meta about this, using David Halperin’s book about gay male culture, an acafan was like “You know I just wrote a book chapter about that, right?”

So then I wrote a meta about her book chapter:

<https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/179699430439/i-just-realized-its-fandom-first-friday-and-the>

The book itself is here:

[https://books.google.com/books?id=yDJKDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA189&lpg=PA189&dq=%22slash+drag%22+%22francesca+coppa%22&source=bl&ots=sk5wM98qs5&sig=ACfU3U1DN0Pweg6CYsq9cA0sOKzhRNmY6A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiPoMXMmp7mAhVMd6wKHagMCGsQ6AEwA3oECAsQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22slash%20drag%22%20%22francesca%20coppa%22&f=false](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fbooks.google.com%2Fbooks%3Fid%3DyDJKDwAAQBAJ%26pg%3DPA189%26lpg%3DPA189%26dq%3D%2522slash%2Bdrag%2522%2B%2522francesca%2Bcoppa%2522%26source%3Dbl%26ots%3Dsk5wM98qs5%26sig%3DACfU3U1DN0Pweg6CYsq9cA0sOKzhRNmY6A%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26ved%3D2ahUKEwiPoMXMmp7mAhVMd6wKHagMCGsQ6AEwA3oECAsQAQ%23v%3Donepage%26q%3D%2522slash%2520drag%2522%2520%2522francesca%2520coppa%2522%26f%3Dfalse&t=YTI3YTg3N2RhYzdhMDNhYWZjMzRlZThmNGEyMTZmZjI2MDdmMWUxZCxYMk1kYWJmNw%3D%3D&b=t%3AF7RptIYdAO86KVsNGkj6aw&p=https%3A%2F%2Folderthannetfic.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F189488178049%2Fthreerings-fairytalelovedramas&m=1)


	3. Insides vs. outsides

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: December 6, 2019.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/189516184144/your-discussion-about-the-insides-not-be

> Anonymous asked: Your discussion about "the insides not be represented by the outsides" is also a good explanation for why so many fans latch on to non-canonly gay characters as gay/lesbian/bi/whatever (where it's a headcanon) and often not on the actually canon LGBT characters/rep (what few there are). Because they feel the insides of that character represent something about them more so than the character who happens to be gay because marketing decided to allow it.

Yuuuuuup.

Cf. my rant about Lost Girl. Anyone with a single brain cell can see that Kenzi is the most compelling character in the pilot <strike>and every other episode</strike>. More than that, she’s the one I suspect most geeks will relate to the most. Is she in one of the canon queer ships… *hollow laughter*

Not only can one just happen to not connect with the lone queer character, but also, the characters who are allowed to be queer are not random. They’re usually a minor ensemble member and not the fun cameo one everybody finds fascinating either. They usually have no relationship or a very boring one that is never explored. If they’re more major, they usually get killed off or their partner does. At the very least, they absolutely do not get a billion seasons of will-they-won’t-they, undercover as a couple, and all of the other shenanigans that happen to the likes of Booth and Bones or Castle and Beckett.

When you have a queer lead who _is_ very major and who _does_ get the same dumb, beloved tropes as straight leads, they’ll often be the fandom fave.

This is why _most_ canon couples in BL, danmei, “m/m romance”, etc. are very popular among people who like those genres at all, but most fanfic of big English-language TV and film is about presumed-straight characters.


	4. representation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally posted: January 16, 2020.
> 
> https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/190296915259/the-weird-thing-is-is-that-even-as-a-wlw-i-dont

> Anonymous asked: The weird thing is, is that even as a WLW I don't see fanfic as representation? Because it's not mainstream media. It's just content I indulge in and create to reflect my experiences or fantasies. But I don't get the "we don't have to settle for problematic fanfic anymore" as making any sense. And I don't understand why newer people to fandom are so obsessed with it being rep? It's great! But it's not airing on prime time.

They see “representation” as a combo of “I’m important and you should cater to me. It’s not fair that other people have fun things and I don’t!” and an “It gets better” lifeline that could come from literally any piece of media a queer kid consumes.

They’re not thinking in terms of the other half of representation, which is normalizing things for a mainstream audience.

They also have no clue how any media industries work. They see a BNF writing long fics as exactly the same as a showrunner on a big show: Both are content providers whose stuff they spend hours consuming.


End file.
